Methods for critical international relations

This chapter provides an overview of the transversal method conversation in critical International Relations. It starts with two overarching challenges to critical method development: the demand to build scientific legitimacy for unorthodox ways of studying the social world and the dilemma of how to remain critical in the process of formalizing critical research through methods. We differentiate three main sensibilities that organize this conversation – discourse, practice, and affect – and discuss reflexivity as a critical method variously mobilized in interpretive, structural sociological, and new materialist approaches. While discourse analysis remains the canonical method, practice research has gained traction and triggered significant method innovation in the field. Affect challenges most of the established method parameters and redefines the controversy over the role of language in critical inquiry. The paths ahead include problematization of method in response to the growing influence of new materialism and changing research practices in the digital environment.